Reefsong Page 5

  “You idiot!” Waight snapped. “I told you to be careful of her hands. Hold her still while I...” Angie felt the hot sting of a tranquilizer dart. She continued to struggle, but her muscles stopped responding. She lay helpless in Crawley's grasp.

  Blood ran freely from four deep gouges along his right cheek; they crossed the existing scar almost at right angles. His blood, hot and sticky, dripped onto her forehead.

  “I'll make you sorry for this, Warden.” His eyes were wild with fury.

  “Suck ash, Admin,” she forced out.

  “Get up!” Waight demanded. “Get off of her!” She pushed Crawley aside. “Damn it! She's bruised three tips. Look, they're starting to swell already.” Angie felt the doctor's probing fingers on her own, but was unable to move in response. She pictured again the wild swing at Crawley and felt the last of her control slip away.

  “Take her into rehab,” Waight said. “She obviously doesn't need any more muscle stimulation.”

  Crawley lifted her, and for a brief time she was conscious only of blurred walls and doors. Finally she was dumped onto a chaise in a small pale yellow room.

  “Strap her in,” Waight said as Angie tried to steady her vision. “That muscle relaxant will wear off fast.” Crawley wrapped Velcro restraints around Angie's upper arms and across her thighs and ankles. Waight secured her wrists then submerged her hands in separate troughs of transparent gel.

  As her muscular control began to return, Angie fought the restraints. Her struggle resulted only in a grunt of satisfaction from Crawley. She stopped.

  “I won't do it,” she said. It came out in a rasping whisper.

  Crawley wiped a hand across his cheek and looked down at the blood.

  “Come on,” Waight said, motioning toward the door. “She'll be safe enough here. The longer we wait to treat those cuts, the worse they'll scar. You found that out the last time.”

  Crawley's pale eyes darkened further, but he turned to the door without objection.

  "I won't do it, Crawley!" Angie called after him. She counted slowly and very methodically to slow her heartbeat.

  Finally, she looked down at her hands.

  Chapter 4

  “Oh, mother of mountains!” she moaned.

  Angie had seen many holos of waterworlders, and she had even shaken hands once with a visiting Lesaat delegate. But nothing had prepared her to accept the snaking tendrils that now extended from her own wrists. Only the vague shape of true hands remained—flat central palms, each edged with five webbed tentacles. The tentacles were longer than the fingers they had replaced, and thinner by far. They writhed in slow, random movements through the viscous healing gel.

  Each thin tendril ended in a tiny, needle-point nail, which explained the damage her wild swing had done to Crawley's face. As she watched, the tendril that should have been her left thumb curled upward. It twisted to display an underside lined with shallow, round depressions.

  Angie gagged and turned away. By activating her telescopic vision, she could make out a fine web of cracks in the paint on one wall. They revealed an underlayer of dark green. The color of evergreens in deep shade, she thought. Even if it was just a layer of mildew, she wished they had left the wall green.

  Lesaat, she thought. Earth's new South Pacific paradise.

  She had only been ten years old when the waterplanet was discovered, but she could still remember the excitement in the news announcer's voice. “It has two great continents at the poles,” he had crowed, “and a scattering of tropical coral atolls circling the equator. There's enough room for at least a third of Earth's population.”

  “Well, I'm not leaving these mountains,” Angie had promptly declared.

  Her father had laughed, and promised, “Nothing will ever get this family out of these mountains, Angie girl.”

  But something had. Prohibitive taxes had eventually forced Angie's mother into an office job in Denver. She had been killed in a commuter crash two years later, and within another two, Angie's father had been forced to sell their land, the last of the privately held ranches in the state, to the Company and move downslope. Shortly after, Angie had been accepted into the U.N. troubleshooter's school in Wyoming.

  The widely exalted promise of Lesaat had not been realized either. The pole continents had turned out to be ice-covered year-round, and the atolls provided too small a land base to support great numbers of immigrants. Only a very few had relocated there to farm Earth-based algae in the nutrient-rich seas.

  Algae! Angie thought. They've turned me into a fireloving algae farmer! Mother of mountains, Nori! How could you do this to me? She caught her breath in a sob, then angrily stopped. She forced her breathing to slow. In through the nose. Out, slowly, through the mouth. She tried to center her feelings, tried to reestablish enough calm to think.

  My hands!

  The dark green cracks swam out of focus.

  Damn you, Nori!

  Angie clutched at the anger, holding it tight in her mind. It was much easier to deal with than the pain of Nori's betrayal. Never get too close, she remembered thinking just moments before this horror had begun. She exhaled slowly through clenched teeth.

  The hiss of the lock brought Angie's attention back to the door. It was Pua, wearing the same Think Wet! T-shirt hanging loose over faded shorts. Her hips were narrow, but her thighs were heavily muscled. A swimmer, Angie thought. This time, Pua kept her hands in plain sight. Her fingertips reached almost to her knees.

  A fringe of white and yellow cloth was tied around one ankle; a braid of what looked like hair circled the other. Her long, wide—too wide—feet were encased in cloth slippers.

  “What do you want?” Angie asked.

  Pua lifted a hand to brush her long hair away from her face. The golden brown tendrils slid smoothly through the ebony mass. She crossed to Angie's side and looked down at the gel baths, then moved around her to draw aside a curtain of the same drab color as the room. Angie had not even noticed the curtain.

  Behind a wall of windows, the Pacific shimmered brilliant blue under a midday sun.

  Pua pressed her hands against the glass and stared out. The webs between her fingers were translucent, the thin flesh turned almost incandescent with the daylight glowing through. Her long, tapered fingers slid in graceful curves over the window's smooth surface. Angie forced herself to watch.

  Pua's hands were smaller than her own—they looked a little small for the girl's body size—but otherwise they appeared identical to those extending from Angie's own wrists.

  “They won't let me swim here,” Pua said. “Outside in the open ocean, I mean. They say it's too dangerous.”

  The fingers of one hand slid inward until the hand became a fist, still pressed against the glass. “They're afraid I'll leave and never come back.”

  “Would you?” Angie didn't know what to say to her. It wasn't the girl's fault the Company had done this thing.

  “Yes.” Pua paused. Her fist opened and she tapped a quick tattoo against the windowpane with her nails. “No. There's no place to go. There are too many people. This ocean doesn't taste right, and it's the wrong color. It doesn't sing...” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I hate it here. Earth is a stupid place.”

  “The whole Earth isn't like this recon station,” Angie said. “Not all Earthers are like Waight and Crawley.”

  “Some of them are worse,” Pua replied. “Doctor Waight took me to a swimming beach once, a place for station employees and their families.” She pointed. “Down there. They had a big screen up over the whole beach, so people could lie outside without worrying about the sun. Hardly anybody was swimming. When some dolphins came near the shore, somebody started screaming, ‘Sharks! Sharks!’ and everybody ran up on the beach. It was really dumb.”

  Angie smiled in spite of herself. “I'd get out of the water in a hurry, too, if I thought there were sharks in there with me.”

  Pua snorted. “How can anybody mistake dolphins for a shark pack? They don't so
und or feel anything alike.”

  Angie thought for a moment, then said, “We get sharks up in the mountains sometimes. Inspectors from admin—long on teeth and short on brains. Mostly, I ignore them.”

  The side of Pua's mouth lifted into a small smile. “We have that kind on Lesaat, too.”

  “So what happened down on the beach?” Angie asked. “Did you go in the water?”

  Pua sighed. “Before I could convince Dr. Waight it was safe, somebody noticed my hands. He started pointing and saying things, and complaining about how squids shouldn't be allowed on public beaches. I told him to suck air, and he got mad and started kicking sand at me. Some other people started to say things then, so Dr. Waight made me leave.”

  She turned to face Angie. “Those were people who see waterworlders all the time here in the station. They work with them every day. Do you think people outside would act any different?” She cocked her head. “Would you, if you had met me before?”

  She glanced down at Angie's hands, her look as much of a challenge as her words. She stepped forward and reached into one of the recon gel baths.

  “Don't!” Angie said as rippling pressure ran the length of her fingers. She tried to pull away.

  Pua giggled. “You're curling them backwards.”

  “Don't touch me, damn it!”

  Abruptly, the grip around Angie's palm turned hard. Angie caught her breath in surprise, then winced as the pressure increased. She was helpless to return or even resist the girl's grip. “Enough!” she gasped finally. Instantly, the pressure released.

  “If your hands still had bones, I could crack them,” Pua said. She met Angie's look for a moment. “Just so you know.”

  Then, to Angie's surprise, she began stripping open the Velcro restraints. Angie considered her unexpected freedom for an instant, then swung her legs from the chaise and tried to stand. She stumbled forward, nearly falling on limbs that felt like rubber. Her hands proved useless when she tried to use them to balance herself against the wall. She cursed, and sank to the floor in disgust.

  Pua sighed. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Angie demanded.

  Pua lifted a small circular weight from the tray and brought it to Angie's side. She squatted and slipped it over the tip of Angie's left thumb. “Roll that up,” she said. “Pull it into your palm.”

  “I'm not interested,” Angie said. The weight dropped from her limp thumb. Pua snagged it with the tip of a finger before it reached the floor.

  “You have to learn sometime,” she said.

  “What I have to do,” Angie said, “is get out of here.”

  “I've been trying to get out for six months,” Pua said. “And I know how to trip just about any lock they can make. You'd never have a chance. Anyway, where would you go? What could you do? With those, I mean, when you can't even use them?” She gestured toward Angie's hands.

  Angie stared down at her trembling fingers. Work with what you have, she thought. The troubleshooters’ unofficial motto mocked her. She tried to fold her hands into fists. The webbed lower sections responded well enough, but her thin fingers twisted and tangled, totally beyond her control.

  Pua fitted the weight back onto Angie's thumb. “Hold it there,” she said.

  Angie held her breath and tried. What choice do I have? she thought. There was only one medical facility on Earth that could fully restore her hands, and it was owned and operated by World Life. If she was ever to find a way out of this, she was going to have to do something.

  “No, no. Not that way,” Pua said. “Here, watch me.”

  Angie watched, then tried again. Unsuccessfully. “There aren't any bones to use as leverage. How do you control which way the muscles move?”

  “Pretend it's your tongue.”

  “What?”

  “Your tongue doesn't have any bones and you move it well enough,” Pua said.

  Angie became suddenly conscious of her tongue. It felt huge in her mouth. She curled it, first up, then down against the backs of her teeth.

  Pua rolled the weighted thumb inward toward Angie's palm. “Hold it there,” she said. “No, don't try to move it. Just think about your tongue and hold your hand steady.” She tightened the curl of Angie's thumb.

  Angie frowned and focused her attention on her thumb and her tongue.

  “That's good!” Pua cried, and the weight promptly slipped off Angie's unintentionally relaxed thumb. Pua sighed. “Well, pretty good.”

  Angie stared at her hand. She focused on the thumb again, trying to curl it in toward her palm. It wavered for a moment, but then began to turn inward. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and curled the thumb tighter. Pua looked up at her and grinned.

  “See?” she said. “It's easy. Dr. Waight will hook you up to the biofeedback machines soon. They have a standard set of training exercises they put all the regular tankers through. But doing it with your tongue is better—it takes less time.”

  “How do you know how much time it takes?” Angie asked.

  Pua looked quickly down at her hands. “I—I don't really.” She glanced up. “I'm just guessing.”

  Angie shook her head and smiled. She found herself actually liking this strange girl. “I'll tell you what, Waterbaby. If you'll teach me how to use these hands without Waight and Crawley monitoring my every move, I'll teach you how to tell a proper lie. You'll never survive here otherwise.”

  The challenge returned to Pua's eyes. “Nobody else around here knows when I'm lying. So, how come you think you can? Here, hold that steady. Good. Now try it with the other hand. Don't move it. Just hold it still.”

  “Reading people's voices and body language is a big part of how I make my living,” Angie said. “It lets me know when I can trust someone.” Watching the delicate precision of Pua's fingers as she adjusted the tiny weights, Angie found it hard to believe these were the same hands that had caused her such crushing pain earlier.

  “My dad said you should always find out what a person wants most before you trust them,” Pua said.

  Good advice,” Angie replied. “Have you figured out what people around here want yet?”

  “Dr. Waight wants to be famous,” Pua said. “That's why she's studying me. She thinks if she can figure out how to grow hands like mine, other scientists will pay attention to her.”

  Angie nodded. “And Crawley?”

  “He's a Company man. He wants money.”

  “No,” Angie corrected. “He wants power. He needs money in order to get it. I wonder how much of a recruitment bonus he expects to get for me.”

  Suddenly, Pua laughed. “Look at your hand.”

  Angie looked down. The long slender fingers of her left hand had wrapped neatly around one of the narrow legs of the tray. She was gripping the plastic post loosely, but securely. In her surprise, Angie almost let go. More by relaxing than by concentrating, she retained the hold. She tried to move one finger, and watched in amazement as it uncurled and rose in slow, uneven increments. She laughed and relaxed, and it wrapped around the tray leg again.

  Pua was beaming, genuinely pleased.

  Angie watched her for a moment before asking, “What is it you want most, Pua?”

  Pua's smile disappeared. She straightened. “I want you to take me to Pukui.”

  “Pukui?”

  “That's my reef on Lesaat.”

  Angie's hand slipped from the tray. She pulled her feet under her and stood. “I'm not going to Lesaat!”

  Pua didn't move. Only her eyes shifted as Angie took a step forward. “Dr. Waight wants to keep me for her experiments, but if you promise to do what Mr. Crawley wants, he'll fix it so you can take me with you. I know he can do it. He's the one who's really in charge.”

  “I won't do what Crawley wants,” Angie said. “And even if he does find a way to force me off-planet, I'm sure as hell not going to take—”

  “I could help you.”

  “I
don't need any help. Spit!” Angie cursed as she stumbled on her weakened legs.

  “What are you going to do when they put you in the water?” Pua asked.

  Angie stiffened. She lifted a slow hand to the side of her neck.

  “I was there when they tested your gills,” Pua said.

  Angie had forgotten all about the gills. The velvety touch of her new fingers ran down a sensitive line that she knew from holos must be the outer edge of a gill flap.

  “Dr. Waight thought your panic was just a reaction to being taken from the dep tank so suddenly,” Pua said, “but I could tell you were really scared. I could taste it. You were afraid to go under the water.”

  Angie remembered. During her dark sleep in the dep tank, she had relived the nightmare of that stupid boating accident she'd had the year before. She shuddered as she recalled the horror of icy suffocation she had experienced while being sucked through an underground river channel. I thought I had dealt with that fear, she thought. Then she admitted reluctantly that her way of dealing with it had been just to stay away from the water.

  She swallowed hard and leaned against the side of the chaise, wishing she could hurl it across the room instead. Her hands refused to fold into fists.

  “They won't care,” Pua said. “When they find out, they'll just push you under water and hold you there.”

  “I'll let them drown me,” Angie replied.

  Pua snorted. “You can't drown! Your lungs seal off as soon as your face is submerged, and your gills start feeding oxygen right into your bloodstream. If you take me with you, and we go right away, I can go into the water with you. In the beginning, I mean, until it doesn't scare you so much. Then after you do the job they want, you can look for a way to get your other hands back. That's what you want most. I can tell.”

  Work with what you have, Angie thought.

  “You need me, Mountainlady,” Pua said.

  Spit!

  “What do they want me to do out there, anyway?”

  Pua blinked. Trying to decide whether to lie or not, Angie thought. She's settled on me as her best bet for getting home, but she's smart enough not to trust me.